Linux Mint 18.3 “Sylvia” Cinnamon – BETA Release

This is the BETA release for Linux Mint 18.3 “Sylvia” Cinnamon Edition.

Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia Cinnamon Edition

Linux Mint 18.3 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2021. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use.

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321 comments

Hi – Release features look impressive and will give it a shot soon! Cinnamon and Mint are growing and becoming mature with every release.
I was wondering if backup manager can be released as an update to all users which will helps users to take backup (say 18.2) before they upgrade to 18.3.

Hey Anand,
using a beta backup solution is not a good idear. Stick with your current solutions, at least for your workstation. When 18.3 leaves testing and becomes an official release you will be able to install the backup solutions even under 18.2.
All the best,
Chrizzldi

Nice job, welcome Sylvia.
Typo in the beta release annoucement :
– The 64-bit ISO is recommend for all modern computers
+ The 64-bit ISO is recommended for all modern computers
– It will also be possible to upgrade from Linux Mint 18.1.
+ It will also be possible to upgrade from Linux Mint 18.2.

Great…in this release now i can finally use ‘natural (reverse) scrolling’ with my mouse by a short command in the terminal…** xinput –set-int-prop 8 “libinput Natural Scrolling Enabled” 8 1 **
However i still hope to see a switch in the mouse settings soon.
THX for your work! 🙂

Everything sounds really great! Looking forward to the final release!
I would like to suggest one thing. Maybe in the future release. I find it very useful when a pdf viewer has options in print menu such as to print current page, current view, to choose odd or even pages. Also when scaling dialog includes: none, fit, shrink and booklet lay out. I only see those in Adobe reader 9 which is not supported for sometime now and is glitchy. Would be so cool to have them in native pdf viewer!

This is by design.. we only rebuild the tiles (i.e. the visual elements) of the software you installed/removed. We could go further and actively lookup dependencies as well I guess. Please create a github issue for this so we can look at it and implement it in the future.

Is there any reason to design the Software Managers to display/marked packages as install, witch in reality are not installed?
If it was missed I can understand it but in the case this was intentional, I don’t understant the logic.
Unfortunately I do not have a github account and I do not intend to create one.
I would be very usefull if you can integrate in the future a bug reporting tool maybe in the system reports.
It should be easy without accounts…

My only problem with all of the Linux versions is the insistence that a password must be entered to do any system changes,, This included HDMI connections
My laptop is always connected to my TV via HDMI, if at any time I switch the laptop off, when switching on again I would have to re configure the HDMI SOUND connection.
including having to insert a password, just to do something that should be automatic.

For this reason, Linux is not USER FRIENDLY for me and cannot be used , especially if my family want to listen to music or watch a movie via the laptop

Hi, just installed LM 18.3 Cinnamon in a VM of Vmware Fusion. Unfortunately the app software-sources does not work. It offers the legitimation window and after that nothing happens.
Hope this hint helps and many thanks for your fantastic work.
Tom

I can reproduce the Bluetooth issue that VaGNaroK mentions as well but only if Bluetooth has been disabled first. Open the Bluetooth applet, disable Bluetooth and close (you may have to reboot first before attempting to enable Bluetooth for the problem to occur).

Then, in Settings, click on the Bluetooth icon. It will take a minute or so for the Bluetooth applet window to appear. Once Bluetooth is enabled and the window is closed the Bluetooth applet will start nearly instantly from then on like it should. I reproduced this twice out of 4 tries so it doesn’t appear to happen every time. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to run this through the terminal to pick up any errors.

I have the same issue with the desktlets in the download section. When i try to refresh the cache :
“A problem occurred while trying to access the server, please try again later.
Details: HTTP Error 400: Bad Request ”. Was working well on Mint 18.2 Cinnamon

Hi Clem
cinnamon crashes on the test version of 18.3
i was installing a script to restart the network manager and cinnamon crashed 3 times.
This problem was happening in cinnamon 17.3 even while the computer was idle, however the problem seems to be worse as it is happening more often
my system is
operating system linux mint cinnamon 64 bit
cinnanom 3.6.2
kernel 4.10.0-38-generic
intel celeron cpu n3060
3.7 gig ram
graphic card intel corporation device 22b1
Below is the script

Where’s the stack trace? We developed a tool especially to gather crash reports.. can you run System Reports from the menu and find the stack trace for this crash? You can pastebin it then so we can look at it.

Thanks for the explanations on how to reproduce the issue. They’re clear and precise. We can’t reproduce the issue in a VM here, but we’ll try on a couple of HW.

Put back the sleep, remove the NM restart, test it a 100 times. Do the same the other way around (with no sleep, and only the NM restart) and confirm observations until you know exactly what makes it crash.

We also need that backtrace from mintreport…

Dave, you’re seeing something we want to fix right now. But if we can’t reproduce it, and if we don’t have that backtrace, chances will be slim we’ll be able to do anything.

i noticed that this version is using system d and so my script is wrong, however i used the command
sudo systemctl restart network-manager
the result : restarts net work manager sometimes and other times cinnamon crashes. i have no idea what to do

Clem it looks great so far. only problem I had with the live cinnamon release was I could not load anything from the new software store, which looks awesome btw! I will try installing it on a a spare computer soon!
thank you!!

Because GTK 3.18 isn’t stable yet (in regards to theme engines), because the jump to 19 is where we decided to switch to Mint-Y, and before that theme needs a little bit more work and polish before we derive it into a multitude of colors. But it will happen in time, eventually 🙂

Hello.
** BUG **
I tried to install some flathub packages through the software manager, but they can’t. Non flatpak packages install quickly and without problem.
The I tried installing flathub packages with the terminal, and got this error:
error: While pulling runtime/org.gnome.Platform/x86_64/3.24 from remote flathub: Writing object 5e032e08e01053e1af725e92ad8cfd9a7da1ef3acbda4e2ee5819065e2462f03.file: fsetxattr(user.ostreemeta): Operation not supported.
I tried with different packages, all with the same result.
All done from an installation of Cinnamon Beta on 16GB USB pendrive made with Etcher (I don’t know if that matters).

With display resolution of 1366×768 the Software Manager is just a bit longer then the screen (the status bar hides part of it) – I think that this very useful utility should fit into this resolution (which many laptops use).

…Just installed it – everything looks amazing. The Software Manager looks beautiful. The Cinnamon Menu works fine now for Right-to-Left languages (thanks for the fix!). I’ve also seen the option to Auto-Login (thanks again).

Very easy dual-boot installation on a Toshiba laptop with no problems at all. Thanks a lot.

About LM 18.2 Cinnamon:

On another Dell-E5430 laptop where I’ve installed Linux Mint Cinnamon 18.2, I can see that the brightness (and even the sound) are set to 100% anytime the laptop wakes up from sleep (when I open the lead). It also happens when I log out or switch user: the brightness set to 100%, and sometimes also the volume is set to 100%.
It might be related to that hardware (which is well supported by Ubuntu/Linux Mint) – but maybe not…

I agree that a good hardware info program is missing in the control panel.

I just had a new HP laptop to install last week, where the Wi-Fi driver is still not supported by Ubuntu (apparently) – the first thing that you need is any possible information about the hardware (I needed ‘lshw’, ‘lspci’, ‘iwconfig’, ‘hardinfo’, etc, just to understand what device is not working and the “ID” of that device, which was a few haxa digits…).

A good hardware info program is a program that can provide practical information about devices which are not working at all, or working partially; information that can help you search in the Internet for a solution. I mean any info that helps you identify the “ID” of a device, even if this device is not supported at all by the system.

The problem with many hardware info programs is that they do not give an exact “ID” for a device, which you can look for in the Internet for solution.

For example, on HP 250 G6 Notebook with Wi-Fi device: “Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.” – I could only get the device ID with ‘lsusb’ command, and that ID is: 10ec:d723 (which has no driver yet for Ubuntu).

Using this ID I could find information on the Internet. But hardinfo and other programs don’t show you this important info… and you cannot use these programs to find help in the Internet in these cases.

Nice release. I think I’ll give Cinnamon a try again!
One question: in new features – GNOME Online Accounts you mentioned: “this support makes it possible to browse Google Drive and OwnCloud in Nemo.”
How is it with NextCloud? Quick search suggests that it should be compatible but some people had issues before.

I agree with Richard Booysen. After I plug in my HDMI connection to watch a movie or listen to music from my laptop and forget to switch the sound back to the built in speaker, whatever applications used the HDMI output will no longer is able to switch. The only workaround is that I have to find a TV with HDMI and plug my laptop back in then switch the output destination. What a pain.

I’m not completely sure this will fix your issue (from your description it looks a little bit different..), but in any case.. we looked at it and tried to reproduce the problem and we found an issue which prevented us from choosing the profile on devices which failed to be set as active.

Typically, we’d switch our HDMI sound profile to a non-functional one.. that would result in PA switching to another device and from there we could no longer make HDMI sound the active device, thus we weren’t able to change its profile again.

Install a few flatpak successfully. Since flatpak apps ignore current theming (? for now) some of the more popular themes are available at flathub for installation but they not present in the store. Are you planning to add them also in the list ?

Btw just want to clarify that for now those FP themes are applied to flatpak applications independently of the Mint theme. But if identical themes are selected, you get uniformity among both types of apps. At least from what I tested.

Before we can get Mint-Y and Mint-X into Flathub though or have them installed by default even, we’ll need to make Flatpak builds for them. And before that can happen, we’ll need to adapt these themes to work with GTK 3.26. This is something we need to do in preparation for Mint 19 anyway and it will be in the roadmap.

Music players (Spotify and Google Play Music) installed from flatpak repository does not show up in “Launch Player” menu in sound applet. Also when using bluetooth headphones that show up like “headset” in bluetooth settings manager starts with really low sound quality and when changed to “high fidelity” in sound settings the sound is good but the setting is not saved after bluetooth headphones is disconnected and can not be toggled to high fidelity again without doing the pairing process all over again. This problem also exists in Ubuntu 16.04 but is fixed in 17.10.

mintinstall shows the progress bar in the panel only if mintinstall has the current program on the window. If you click the back arrow in mintintall and search for more programs to install, the progress bar does not show in the panel. Please make the progress bar in the panel remain even if the back arrow in mintinstall has been selected (eg searching for more software to install). Thank you

@Linux Mint https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3445#comment-138020
Can this be done without login/logout please? Gets a bit confusing when setting up a computer to remember which programs have been installed. Also would be a better polish to Linux Mint. Thank you

In my old test PC, recovering from standby, the desktop is completely frozen except the mouse. I can access a terminal ctr-alt-f1 but that’s about it. Granted it’s an old bugger. (Athlon 64 3500 + ATI X550). I also have Xubuntu 17.10, windows 7 and they work fine on recovery.

Why are you deleting bug-reports? Neither the maximize problem of the software manager at 1024×768 nor the requirement to press multiple times TAB/SHIFT-TAB for navigation from field to field at software manager are resolved with last update – pls leave some reply so I could decide to whether I should invest more time on testing the beta… – or just delete this reply

So far so good. Install went smoothly and all hardware was recognized. System is stable.

I’m still getting all of my various packages installed, but haven’t encountered any issues. Bonus points for having nVidia Optimus detected and installed correctly of of the box. That’s been a sticking point in previous releases, but was smooth as butter this time.

My perennial feature request is to allow the user to adjust the size of the fonts in the main menu and in panel applets such as the calendar. I understand that the user can adjust the panel height, which in turn adjusts the size of the fonts in the task manager — but even there, the user can’t specify a font size. So all the font sizes are configurable — except the font size of panel items, which seems to be completely dependent on the author of the panel theme. Since cinnamon is so configurable, it would make more sense to allow the end user to configure the font sizes used in panel items as well.

We’ve had that design discussion many times in the past. Opening a menu will inhibit your session.

If you leave your seat belt hanging in the door frame, your car won’t lock either. I know this illustration is a bit cheap, but the use case is arguable to start with, you can’t expect security when you the user are doing things in a hurry and without care in the first place.

This isn’t just a policy or a decision to be stubborn about it, it has many technical implications. It’s hard to say for sure that this won’t change in the future, but as it is now, if you open a menu, don’t expect session management to be active. Doing this de-facto means your computer won’t be considered idle and will block the screensaver.

I’ve had some problems with 57 in Windows (7), i.e. it opens FIVE (or more) files all called Firefox.exe in Task Manager and sucks your RAM resources low enough to stall randomly and so I went back to 56.0.2, but THEN it just reinstalled 57 tonight when I opened it…URRGH! Talk about people getting switched to Windows 10 in midstream…I keep saying that I don’t see Firefox 57 as Ready For Prime Time yet and unfortunately I might have to remove it from an HP Pavilion P7-1111 with G620/2.6 GHz dual core…of it continues to ask badly.

I hear happy happy joy joy from other initial users but I know that FF 56 has run better on older equipment ith Mint 18.2

PS If I actually knew what the five different sized files all named the same actually were about, I’d feel less inclined to shut them all down. There are usually only TWO examples of IE files listed in Windows Task Manager, and I’m sure that since I’ve found the five FF files even while NO FF WINDOWS WERE OPEN I can guess why IE wants to freeze as well. Watching my little green usage icon race up and down like it does, in the ‘high rpm’ so to speak kind of bugs me.

I will add that I’ve got work to do getting partitions changed to allow the monthly ‘rollups’ of ~200 MB to even succeed installing as it is, and as a novice to Linux and still learning stuff about Windows after 32 years it’s a chore, even as I’ve used computers since I was 13 (and that’s 38 years now).

This and another computer of mine were Wintel boxes I converted to Mint, this one first with Maya.

If I Switch to another User (Switch User), and then Log-Out and return to first user:
The system freezes or ask me to enter admin password (a password to go into sleep-mode or alike).
So I must reboot the laptop.

I guess that the Power Management tries to turn off the screen after 10 minutes… therefore, if I return in less then 10 minutes to the first user – there is no problem; but if I return to the first user in more then 10 minutes then the system freezes.

This bug happens all the time (depends on the Power Management settings…).

// test results:
if TEST_TIME == 12 minutes { there is no problem at all }
if TEST_TIME == 25 minutes { there is no problem at all }
if TEST_TIME == 50 minutes { system freezes/misbehave on last — Login user 1 || Logout user 1 }

// I usually return to user1 after 50+ minutes, therefore I get this problem all the time. I’m not sure what is
// the problem, but few times on last — Login user 1 I had to put an admin password to enter sleep mode or alike.

We can’t reproduce this issue. We’d need to know more about what’s going wrong… is there a cinnamon crash etc.. does the mouse still move. Please open an issue on github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon so we can look into this and follow up past the release.

I’ve made another test, with the exact steps and configuration like before, but this time TEST_TIME was 2+ hours and the Toshiba Satellite laptop lid was closed (sleep mode).

When I logged in again to user 1 I had to enter a password in the following box (but in any case, if I enter the password or just close the box – the system freeze and I have to use tty1 to reboot the laptop).

(I wrote this password box message on a paper):

“Authentication is required for suspending the system while other users are logged in.”

Great!
But what about the best desktop environment so far, I mean … KDE ?!
😉
Seriously even if Cinnamon is good, KDE rules ! (for me at least 🙂
Any idea when this edition will be released?
Thx and have a nice day!
P.

In the distribution linux Rosa R9 plazma5 there are all possible VPN.(work with live, the entire set of VPN
). .. can not they be implemented in the Mint? Prices would nebylo distroutivu … accounted for after 4 years of mint use Windows. In ROSA R9 ( about eight workers VPN clients … Implement them in the Mint …. personally I have problemma l2tp.s of the non-reputed repressors install protocols I will not-it’s not safe)

That isn’t a bug. The calculator app uses gnomes client side decorations so the headerbar styling is controlled by the gtk theme. Window borders aren’t drawn on these applications by Cinnamon. Because of that the theme for them will have no effect.

It is possible to manage the themes in a similar way like KDE Plasma does with the gtk applications?
Or maybe to fork the calculator.
Cinnamon is a great DE but in my opinion there are more and more little small thinks witch needs atention.
1) icons (eg. in system settings Input Method icon does not have same corners, Desktop icon is without cornes)
2) main menu can be improoved now it’s similar to win 98
3) more desktop effects and better rendering (eg. on windows scale the widow content scalling is not smooth)
4) calendar applet is too small and has not to many options (eg. events, reminders…)
5) kernel management can be better (eg. sort both columns to have highest version on top, add button to purge all versions, add more LTS versions)
6) pannel applet can be improoved (eg. custom possition on the panel and order the applets in the way the user want with drag or in the applets manager by choosing the applet order)
7) mail client integration. I would really like to have posibility to start the mail client automaticaly in the background and to have an applet to inform me about new emails

If you will consider all this: just details witch does not deserve your attention please let me know.
I am trying just to give feedback from the user point of view.

after formatting a pendrive with the mint stick, you can not copy anything to the same pendrive by ejecting and putting it back. the following message appears:
error when copying to DRIVE, the destination is read-only.

Clem,
One thing about the new look to the website is that is difficult to make out the outline of these input comment boxes on my PC resolution. It appears as white boxes on white background. I only get a black outline when i find the box to click into.

As for the latest release, it is looking excellent, well done to you and the team.
I would preface my comments by saying it’s an old PC at this stage – so that might explain a lot!

1) Perennial issue -> After every installation, the sound is not coming through the HDMI/DisplayPort2 by default. The system should pick this up if there is no Digitial Output (S/Pdif) connected.

2) With PIA Manager, it connects brilliantly fast – great job on this. However, if you run the PIA Manager again from the Start Menu it clears all previous log-in details – I’m unable to re-open it from network connections icon in bottom right panel. Furthermore, after a few minutes the VPN seems to crash, as my network connection goes down, until i disconnect my VPN, at which time the internet conection is fine – I get no error message to say the VPN has gone down though, the application seems to remain running.

3) When i select Timeshift from the start menu, it says
“Authentication is needed to run ‘/usr/bin/env’ as the super user.”
Should “usr/bin/env” read “timeshift”
Also, part of the Finish button is cut off in my resolution

4) Speaking of resolution, the Software Manager window is too high, it is going below the task Manager.

5) In Software Manager – if you use the tab key to move between the Featured application, Editors’ Picks and Categories, you can find yourself in a position where you have one from each selected category simultaneously – so you can’t hit the Enter key. There are in all likelihood shortcut keys for the Software Manager that i’m unaware of, but just saying this isn’t great.
Related to this, when i try to install a package, i have to use my mouse – is that correct, i can’t seem to be able to select Install by tabbing over to it or selecting CTRL+I.

6) In the Backup tool, should the icon for Personal data (home directlory) not be the same home directory icon we see in Nemo? Nothing wrong with the filing cabinet, just inconsistent.

7) I was seeing the Displays application icon for System Settings in the start menu at one stage, but on reboot it seemed to fix itself.

8) Cinnamon did crash on me at one stage. I had earlier opened the bluetooth application, just to see how it looked, before closing it. After a few minutes, i went into the Network application from the Start Menu, i togged wifi from off to on, and then suddenly everything on screen froze. I got a dialogue box saying Cinnamon has crashed and was in fallback mode. I opened System Reports, where it did seem to give me a chance to post it to pastebin, but nothing happened afterwards. The error message in the System Reports did say some Bluetooth application has crashed – despite me having no bluetooth device connected nor did i have the application still open.

9) Finally, more a request than anything, but within Keyboard application, can we add a method of remapping keys, in particular killing the CAPS lock key (not a major thing as i typically break off the Caps lock key with a screwdriver – it just would be nice to have an easy way to disable it).

Hi Gerry, not sure if the same applies to MATE, but in Cinnamon I disable the CapsLock key by creating a Custom Command in Startup Applications. If you can do the same in MATE the screwdriver can stay in the box 🙂 You can try the commands below in the terminal to test them. Putting one of them into the startup process means you don’t have to enter it after each boot.

To disable the CapsLock key: setxkbmap -option caps:none

Alternatively, to set it to a Shift Key: xmodmap -e “keycode 66 = Shift_L NoSymbol Shift_L”

Further to my previous reply, I just went digging and found a GUI option under keyboard settings to disable the CapsLock key! Ah well. Anyway if same doesn’t exist under MATE maybe my previous suggestion will be helpful anyway.

Even with a single monitor connected, via mini-dp, I get no visual feedback after the OS load selection. I do hear the welcome chime though…I’d use hdmi, but I have only one of each connector type and I need the color of my work to stay consistent across both monitors hence the daisy chain set up.

Do only Cinnamon. Only Cinnamon is a popular distribution. I would not waste time on other things. Without Cinnamon I will not use Linux just yet! You would have time to complete the network manager (vpn) and implement the video installer in the lmde3 .I apologize for the translation from Russian to English and then to yours.

Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon is pretty awesome! I haven’t a major issue, but so far:

During installation, when display go off, i cannot bring him back, i must to reboot and go over again. This time i keep display awake and installation was normal. But when finished and and i press the reboot button on popup window, all freeze and i must to reboot manually.

When have folders on cyrillic (bulgarian, in my case), Nemo desktop action “Set as wallpaper…” doesn’t change the wallpaper. It’s an old issue and figured out my self. I change the exec command like this:

In adding applets window, when the window is not on full screen, buttons for adding and remove applet a missing, they show when maximize the window. Here is a screenshot: https://yadi.sk/i/qRlQrHUS3Pnhb8

Regarding the first problem, we’re aware of an issue with nouveau which affects all screensavers.. it’s hard to be sure this is related though. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1474538. You’d need to connect to your computer via ssh and poke around to see if this is related or not.

NEWLY INTRODUCED BUG:
After updating to Cinnamon 3.6.3 a new bug is introduced that screws up the calendar’s time and date appearance if it is set to “use a custom date format.” I’ve had the same result after running the updates on two different computers and also in a virtual box hosted in the first of the two. I always set my time and date format to %a %e %b %Y @ %H:%M:%S. It displayed fine on both machines and in the vbox before I ran the update.

Hi,
the first tests do not report bugs or bugs. Content that has been integrated with gnome online account (GOA) but CINNADOCK, because it is not re-implemented?!?!?!?
It is frustrating that other docks are searched (PLANK ..)
For the rest, great work !!

Hi, great release, thank you all!
Bugs and glitches
– I don’t see the point for the energy-setting switch “enable hibernate” – it’s available in different menus already, even if the switch is disabled.
– If you remove an active theme, it’s not switched to the default theme as it was before.
– The menu-applet animation is still very sluggish (if enabled). Why not use a simple fade in effect like in the good old days? All other transitions look great!
– Spices buttons on the bottom are not shown (in German) until you resize the window horizontally.

Bug Report
Cinnamon looks great, just upgraded from Ubuntu 16.04 lts, which worked flawlessly. I am having consistent mouse problems however with this new Mint 18.3 cinnamon 64 bit. The mouse will freeze, switching usb ports will unfreeze it for a moment, but the problem soon again appears. After a couple times of this happening cinnamon will become completely unresponsive and I have to reboot (can’t access terminal or anything). Reboot fixes problem for a few minutes, then it happens again. Does this no matter which mouse I use, have tried several all work fine on other systems. To be clear, Cinnamon itself is locking up. Page freezes, clock stops, system becomes unresponsive. This, however, happens a few moments after the mouse freezes (keyboard will still be responsive and clock will advance for a moment, then the Cinnamon environment completely locks up).
AMD Phenom 9550 Quad-Core
4.6 GiB ram

That looks like an Xorg issue. Check dmesg, and try to remove xserver-xorg-input-libinput (in case it’s related). It could also be kernel related, you can downgrade to 4.4 using the Update Manager -> View -> Kernels.

As great as Automatic may seem, it really does not mean much in the context of things and would be better if this actually defaulted to some value of what it does to avoid confusion. I feel this is a step backwards, even though every Mint install always has me first changing these things after I discover my touchpad doesn’t work how I want it to.

Click actions | Automatic for me defaulted to Left click only (I think? or emulate mouse buttons?), my preference however is Use multiple fingers for right click and middle click. If a default value I could understand was shown, at least I would have known my issue right away.

Scrolling method | Automatic for me defaulted to 2 finger scrolling, I am a long time edge scroller, so again left with confusion over why I couldn’t scroll with a touchpad and it has also changed from previous installs. It’s normally worse with reverse scrolling, because it also feels like nothing happens when I try scrolling down.

Although I see the benefits of 2 finger scrolling for a touchscreen with Reverse scrolling direction enabled. It’s hard to adjust to Reverse scrolling direction with a touchpad (for me). It’s one of my pet peeves and feel it’s not a “default” that should be on. Maybe there should be a poll on what defaults should be set? As an old computer user, no OS ever trains you into using new methods, they just throw you into the deep end and hope that you can swim.

Apart from Automatic having no meaning, these other things are personal preferences and I do not mind having to change them, it’s normally a once off things for me, and may not be worth the effort. Any means of scrolling however, sounds like it’d fit everyones needs.

This is the result of various tests on various computers. It’s automatic because it depends on the driver being used, and the default choices were made so that nobody would be left with the inability to scroll.

To confirm a couple of issues others have seen with software manager-
-Installed Flatpaks don’t appear in menu until logout/re-login. This is confusing and makes you think install failed.
-As someone else commented, losing the progress bar when you move away from the item you’re installing to continue browsing the software manager leaves you uninformed unless you browse back to the initial app. The previous software manager did this better.

(1) I assigned the ‘Launch web browser’ launcher in keyboard settings to a keystroke combination, with firefox as my default browser. When I pressed the keystroke, firefox started up. However the firefox window did not have focus. I had to click in the browser window first in order to use any of the browser’s own hotkeys, such as control L or control J to positiion the cursor. This happened absolutely consistently. (In fact, it has been happening with Mint as long as I can remember.)

I just discovered that if I define a custom shortcut key for firefox, the problem does not occur at all. So that’s an easy fix for me, but perhaps the pre-defined launcher should be repaired.

(2) It would be really nice if you would make the scroll buttons a slightly different color or value from the scroll bars they sit in. They are too hard to locate, especially for people with less than perfect vision. The grey-on-grey is very elegant, but a little more contrast would help a lot.

I have one issue with users and groups in cinnamon-settings.
Whiles I can change full name in user information, but I can’t type of user’s full name in Korean Hangul in users and groups.
I assume that it might be an issue of permission.
All of the input methods works well in user information.
It happens only into users and groups in cinnamon-settings full name.
Thank you.

Looking at the code, it accounts for that. If a file is skipped, it’s skipped both for backup and when doing the counting. You should really see another line in the report indicating what went wrong with the file that was missing in the count… is there an exception in the terminal when running mintbackup from the terminal?

Can you create an issue for this on github.com/linuxmint/mintbackup/issues?

I think what might have happened is that this file existed when mintbackup counted the files to backup, and it suddenly disappeared during the backup. That would explain why it was counted before but not during the backup probably.

Possible Bug (minor)- gDebi
Install of Opera browser hung:
On previous Mint editions, install process includes pop-up window showing choice to update opera with the rest of the system. No pop up on Mint 18.3 and install process stalls.
the update option was viewable and executable in the the terminal however, so apparently a GUI issue, not a race condition or other software process hang.

The “Update Manager” window is too large for a 10 inch screen so the apply button is hidden. The window will not resize or turn so the user can apply the update preferences. 32 bit ed . Hiding the lower panel doesn’t work either. What is the terminal syntax to apply update preferences?

You should really call a cat a cat. This is not Snap, this is the Ubuntu Store. If we decide to make a Snap repo and we point to it, you no longer will have access to the Ubuntu Store. Every single distribution is in that situation right now. The Ubuntu Store is a good thing, especially for Ubuntu. Snap could be a great thing, for everybody, but it needs repository management.

If you look at Flathub in comparison, it doesn’t have as many apps as the Ubuntu Store, but it’s just “one” remote. Anyone can do better or add to Flatpak by creating extra repositories. As such as it’s similar to what you have with APT, 3rd party repositories and PPAs. It’s versatile and thus it’s more likely to succeed.

Been using PCs since MS-DOS 3.3, so not a novice, by any means, but have only dabbled with Linux. Finally did a real full Linux install, dual booting Linux Mint 18.2 and Windows 10. Loving Linux Mint, spending way more time in it than I expected. Being well experienced with beta bashing, was very excited reading the chcngea in 18,3, but my relative inexperience leads me to a possibly dumb question:

re: “Upgrade instructions:
……..
It will also be possible to upgrade from Linux Mint 18.2. Upgrade instructions will be published after the stable release of Linux Mint 18.3.”

Does mean there is no upgrading 18.2 to 18.3, so I can use the new goodies? And, if it IS possible is it just by running the install from the .ISO, or is it done via the upgrade manager??

Because this is BETA, the upgrade method will be available when it becomes stable. It should be the same as other upgrading methods from 18.1 to 18.2. Done through Update Manager. I am not sure about upgrading through the ISO as I have not done such an installation before but that option may become available. BETA will also be able to upgrade to stable when it is ready.

Smeggy – Not too sure I understood your question properly however, if you’re currently running 18.2 you will be able to upgrade to 18.3 via the Update Manager–no .iso needed. The upgrade from 18.2 to 18.3 will become available after the stable release of 18.3. All you to do is to wait about a week or so after the release and you’ll be able to upgrade.

If you’re running 18.3 beta all you have to do is keep applying regular updates (via the Update Manager) as they come in. That’s it. You’ll end up running 18.3 stable, no upgrade needed.

I see that at least a few Linux versions have updated Firefox to 57 ‘Quantum’…this was a HUGE mistake. It’s REALLY problematic for Windows users as well, from both my experience and that of more useers than I wished to count going over Mozilla’s support site. If I can figure out how NOT to let it automatically update I will gladly reload/downgrade my machines but I am pretty limited to using IE right now. They tell me to turn off accessibility features (heaven forbid if you needed them) but it’s getting silly. I’m not bound to do any more new installations until some progress is achieved, I’m a novice, not a doctor, Jim (Clem).

You need to use Firefox 52 ESR, this is a version that gets security updates until June while staying at version 52. This is much the same as using version 56, a bit slower but safer.
Hopefully the situation will improve in newer versions ; a problem is older extensions / add-ons don’t work with the new model. New add-ons can’t modify the GUI arbitrarily, can’t access every single thing – there is sort of a conflict between higher security and accessibility features.

e.g. ability to capture all keyboard input is very useful but could be used to send your passwords to some basement in China or elsewhere.
So, new accessibility features need to be written into newer Firefox, new add-ons, new solutions (like separate software plus an add-on for integration), I don’t know what’s being done.

It’s bad that you’ll have to change your software with no seeming good reason given but in the mean time you can use 52 ESR and IE, with all security updates applied.

In both an 18.3 x64 live session and installed in virtualbox I’m seeing some glitches in rendering around the calendar applet in some themes. I think the common factor is that the panel has colour gradients in that theme. It looks like there is a badly rendered shadow behind the applet.

Just to add in VirtualBox it’s visible on any theme with light text on a darker background, as long as the background isn’t too dark so the ‘shadow’ can’t be seen – including the stock themes e.g Cinnamon or Linux Mint. A Cinnamon restart fixes it briefly until the time changes again.

Online accounts > Facebook does not seem to work correctly with 2-step-auth. I log in with my username/password and accept the connection from my mobile phone. Then comes the click ok for Facebook gnome to get permission and then when I click ok the window jjust disappear and the it does not seem that it gets logged into facebook. I cannot see the login from online accounts and Gnome Photo cannot access my pictures. Owncloud seems to work fine, can see the login in online accounts andf access my files fine from Nemo.

I thought I’d try Cinnamon, Looks great. only hipcup is panel clock format get weird if you try turn on the custom date format. 17 then it becomes vertical instead of horizontal and change the parameters in the custom line makes not change.
other than that it’s working great.

Software manager
Thank you for changing the size so that the categories are no longer hidden behind the panel and the maximise now working.
The categories not in alphabetical order. Why?
If I scroll down in a category when I change to another category my scroll bar does not reset to the top but stays where it was on the last category.
Why do Editor’s picks and ‘whatever it is above that (unlabelled)’ take up so much room. Make the categories section the main focus of the window.

Just tried the latest update to Cinnamon Desktop 3.6.4+sylvia
Following installation I could not launch the system settings control centre
Restored to previous software from earlier this morning using Timeshift and all working again.
Timeshift is Brilliant!!

NEWLY INTRODUCED BUG:
I Just installed the latest updates on two computers and a vbox machine running Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon, which takes me up to Cinnamon 3.6.4, and now System Settings doesn’t work. There is no way to access it whether by right-clicking and selecting it from a menu choice, or by left-clicking the icon. I can’t even change the desktop wallpaper from the desktop …or any other method now, after this update.

To end on a positive note, I’m happy to say that the previous newly introduced bug has now been fixed. 🙂

spacy01 – Thanks. After a little more tweaking of the cs_sound.py file, I was able to get Control Center working again. Test by running “cinnamon-settings” in the terminal and it will identify the line with error as Carlos discovered below.

Indentation error in /usr/share/cinnamon/cinnamon-settings/modules/cs_sound.py lines 689 and 690.
I just installed the beta today and ran across this issue, lines 689 & 690 simply needed indentation to fix it.

This bug prevented cinnamon apps such as themes, backgrounds, networks, etc. from loading. Not sure its already been fixed, as I created my boot drive a day or two ago, but thought I’d let you guys know.

After the updates Cinnamon 3.6.4 System Settings does not start anymore.
If I run cinnnamon-settings in cmd I get an error but unfortunately I cannot paste it here due to blog security firewall policy.

Hello ..
Great work I love the changes already … but you can not install more than one application at the same time Ad in the previous App Manager … I was able before to mark all wine components and let the installation take its time .. now I installed wine and wait till its finished and then install wine Gecko and then go to mono

LM18.3 beta x64 with latest updates:
Nothing happens when right clicking on the desktop and selecting Change Desktop Background
Nothing happens when selecting Settings from the Menu
In fact can’t seem to get into a couple of settings items in Preferences

It said that it is possible to upgrade from 18.2 to 18.3 version. I assume that the upgrade feature is on Update Manager. And you said that installed LibreOffice in this packages are version 5.1. My question is, what if I already installed LibreOffice to the latest version (5.4.3), by upgrading into 18.3, is it will be overwrite my LibreOffice (and all apps) to 5.1?

Those two buttons didn’t change, because for display them are used action icons. And these category of icons are not presented in Mint-Y icon theme. Not yet, anyway. And because Mint-Y inherits Mint-X, the icons remain the same. The lock icon is changing, because for display her, is used an app icon, called ‘system-lock-screen’, and app category is already presented in Mint-Y icon theme, and the icon is changing. 🙂

In dual boot with Windows 10, problem with the Windows clock that loses an hour if you boot Linux then reboot on Windows. We must constantly adjust it … it’s really painful. Problem present since Mint 18.x

I hope that LMDE 3 will benefit from all the improvements of this 18.3

Not quite sure why Linux/Mint should fix Windows problems but there is a simple command you can run… Windows works on local time, easier to track your activity no doubt, Linux works on system time. To change Linux to local time run.

Hi,
I compared the installation of the Google calendar desklet in LM 18.3 vs LM18.2,
While i like the new look and feel, the old desklet dialogue box seems more responsive in installing this desklet. The configure icon doesn’t seem to work to be responsive at all.

Hi, this might be specific to my PC.
Open mintUpdate 5.3.1, disconnect your PC from the Internet, by pulling out the LAN cable, and select “Refresh”
An error message dialogue box appears with the title bar reading “Synaptic” (as opposed to “mintUpdate” ) and saying “Could not download all repository indexes
The repository …..will be ignored. Check your network connection and ensure the repository address in the preferences is correct.”

The point is the height of the dialogue box runs off the bottom of the screen (1280 x 720) so you can’t select Close, until you use ALT and drag the window up. If the maximum height of the error message dialogue box was consistent with mintUpdate, it would be perfect.
thanks

gnutls-cli http://www.google.com returns at the end :
– Status: The certificate is NOT trusted. The certificate issuer is unknown.
*** PKI verification of server certificate failed…
*** Fatal error: Error in the certificate.
*** Handshake has failed
GnuTLS error: Error in the certificate.

While I have sound from applications (Firefox, VLC, etc) I can produce no sound from the actual “Sound” settings window in “System Settings”. Neither by the “Test sound” applet under “Output” or by playing samples of sound effects under “Sound effects”. My audio hardware is apparently picked up okay and shows in the “Sound” settings window (Built-in audio) and output is set to analog stereo as it should be but no sound is produced.

I addition to my previous comment, I started “Sound” settings from the terminal and when the window came up I clicked the “Test Sound” button and then the “Front right” and Front left” buttons once each. I posted the output to Pastebin:

Thank so much Clem and the team for the great effort with 18.3. It’s really become a great product and a wonderful environment to work in.

I would like to request, if at all possible, for the ability to be able to use the keyboard arrow keys in Pix (much like in nemo) to quickly navigate around the top-left folder (directory) window when the focus is on that windows. At the moment, Pix is not very friendly if you want to scan through many folders to quickly find the right folder with a photo you might be looking for. You have to keep using the mouse all the time to move to a next folder which makes the program quite cumbersome to use with a large photo library. Otherwise it is a really great program.

This change would also make Pix’s behaviour more intuitive and consistent with other programs like nemo (and file explorer for ex-Windows users and Aperture for ex-Apple users). Perhaps it could be made an option in the preference menu, if you do not want to have the suggested behaviour as the normal one.

Thanks so much for considering, Chris

PS: I would be happy to make a small donation bounty contribution to Mint as an encouragement to get this feature (please don’t take offense), sooner rather than later.

No offense taken, but we don’t let money steer development. Funding is important but it should have no impact on design or resource allocations. You’ll never see us do bounties or commit to work items in exchange for money. The reason we get funded is precisely so that we get empowered on this. Bounties and all have the opposite effect, they dictate what we should work on. This will be done if it makes sense, whether anyone donates or not.

Can you create an issue on github.com/linuxmint/pix? Make sure to describe the workflow you’re following with very simple steps to follow. What’s on the screen, what key you’re pressing, what’s happening, what you’d like to happen instead.

Also if you get a chance, please install gthumb and see if it behaves better in that regard. Pix is based on gthumb so that helps us a lot.

Pix : Import from removable device doesn’t work in a VM. Mount the host-file-system in a VM (add user to vboxsf such that nemo can access the mounted volume). Although there a lot of pictures on the mounted device (.pg, .png, …) the number of files to import remains 0. Of course, one can use Nemo to copy the files, but it is strange that pix-import shows no files.

GNOME Online Accounts is a GNOME service/component. We can’t change the way it works (i.e. only list some of it and not all of it) and it’s not perfect (it does crash now and then.. things should get better as we move to 18.04 and a new GOA version in Mint 19) so it’s there in Cinnamon 3.6, it’s supported and it works but it’s not neatly integrated because it’s not really a part of Cinnamon itself.

We added an information screen to show you which apps support services Cinnamon doesn’t, so you can install these apps and benefit from these online services.

Pix : Import from removable device : Compress a set of pictures and mount the archive. Pix-import will detect the drive and will be able to import the pictures. Nice! Mount a samba-share with the same pictures on the shared drive. Pix-import will detect the mounted drive, but will not be able to detect the pictures (Getting folder listing … )

Not sure if I should post this hear or not? I’ve been having a problem with my soundcard crashing. I figured it was one of the Cinnamon updates. After going back in time I’ve found out that ‘FireJail’ is the one crashing my soundcard. Anyone else seen this with 18.3 BETA

Good Morning,
the “Mint-Y” icons (Quit and Logout buttons) in the menu were implemented (it was very cool); Congratulations on everyone’s work. I have not yet been able to contribute financially, but I am working on translations for PT-BR.

After installing the latest updates, it is no longer possible to update applets, desklets, themes. After the warning that the cache is out of data, an error-message pops up : An error occurred while trying to access the server. Please try again in a little while.

The width seems to be a little too large, as to allow a couple millimeters of side-to-side scrolling. Not sure if this is intentional for long application names, but it harms the polish somewhat. Only reason I discovered this is because I tend to scroll with a track point.

Hi Team. I’ve been using mint cinnamon since Maya. Mint is still by far my favorite OS.
Whats with the perforated lines which appear at the edges of the window. I understand what the line alludes to but apart from looking tacky, ugly and detracting from the whole mint visual experience (particularly on a 70inch 4k display) they are pointless. Why not ditch that misadventure for Sylvia.
My mouse pointer disappears behind some links, buttons and menu items occasionally. Only since upgrading to 18.2. This I have not seen since testing Maya in virtual box years ago.
I love mint because its lite, has no bells and whistles, is visually elegant and everything just ‘works’. If in ain’t broke don’t fix it right?
I did notice the installation process is rather beyond your average user for Sonya due to driver issues not seen in any previous versions.
Oh and I do miss my space login window theme very much.
Just some feedback and constructive criticism for your digestion. Thanks for all your hard work.
lots of love
Desi

There’s still the bug with the new Xed since Mint 18.2! When making changes to an existing document, and closing the program, the dialog pops up asking what to do. When clicking “Save,” it saves the changes, but the editor doesn’t close as it should. You have to confirm a second time. Is it possible to correct this for Sylvia 18.3 Alpha?

Hi Clem & Mint Dev Team. Just a quick thought/idea/request. Would it be possible to add the ability to put the packages in alphabetical order in each category in the Software Manager? I know there’s a search function, and it works well when searching for specific packages, but having packages in alphabetical order for random browsing is always a good thing, don’t you think?

Keep up the great work. Loving this beta version. The final release is going to be even more awesome than it usually is. 🙂

BUG
Flatpak installed packages do not show up under installed software in software centre. Also , when uninstalling a flatpak application from the menu. It removes the icon but not the package. You then have to go into the software centre to uninstall it.

Great job on this release so far though! It shines in so many areas in comparison to other distros!

I can confirm that the installed flatpaks don’t show up in the installed software-list. There is an indication in the flatpack-list, that the flatpak has been installed.

It has always been the case, even for “normal” programs, when they are removed from the menu, that they are not being removed from the system. Removing software must be done via the software-center or the command-line. This approach is logical. One can clean up the menu without removing software and when multiple users are involved, some might remove the item from their menu, while others won’t. Removing the software in such a case would affect the other users.

I keep getting Cinnamon crashes. 8x out of 10 on system shutdown. It ‘reverts’ to the MATE desktop and hangs the shutdown process for about a minute. I suspect there’s a problem with this before shutting down too but can’t narrow it down to describe what’s happening.

The 18.3 Cinnamon BETA won’t encrypt the HDD successfully in a VirtualBox appliance installation. It keeps returning to the screen in the install wizard that allows you to choose the encryption without much info in the failure message other than “failed to encrypt the hard drive”. Non-encrypted install works fine.

When updating the cache for the desklets. I get a message that says: “An error occurred while trying to access the server. Please try again in a little while. Details: HTTP Error 400: Bad Request”
This does not happen when I update the cache for applets or extensions.

Mint 18.3 Sylvia Xfce 64-bit: when resuming from Suspend state, my network connection does not restore even if explicitly requested, and the mouse carat doesn’t appear anywhere. I must reboot to recover, so Suspend is non-functional.